In Between Days
by Catherine Pugh
Summary: Repost of a story begun last year. Scenes of the evolution behind Stan and Peggy's friendship.
1. Chapter 1

"Another late night, Chief?"

Stan appeared in the doorway of Peggy's office, two cups of coffee in his hands. She looked up and smiled.

"Thanks," she said, as he placed one on her desk. "Look, Stan, I'm really sorry about yesterday. I shouldn't have snapped at you."

He held up his hand. "This was a peace offering, baby, I got it." He took a sip from his mug and walked over to the door, shutting it. "Look. You need a vacation. I'm worried about you."

"I'm fine," she replied, waving her hand dismissively. Stan had seen this gesture too many times for his liking in recent weeks. "Don't worry about me."

He watched her as she sat down at her desk and drank her coffee thirstily. "I don't even know what I would do on a vacation. Worry about work, I guess. This Lou guy…"

"…You're taking what that joker says way too personally. He's not going to like you if you keep shooting down his ideas, and you're just going to dig yourself a bigger hole. I know he sticks in your craw, but you have to remember that your work life is not your personal life. And you don't always have to have the last word."

She put her head on her desk. Stan leaned back in the sofa and draped his arm over the back of it. He watched her as she took several deep breaths.

"I know what's been eating at you," he said softly.

"Oh, you do, do you?" she said, her tone sharpening as she glared at him. "Go ahead, make one of your cracks."

He shook his head. "It would be like kicking a puppy," he said. He got up and left the room. Peggy felt a tug in her chest, wondering if she had hurt his feelings. Stan had been driving her nuts lately, but even she could admit that it was nothing concrete.

He returned a few minutes later with a small paper bag. He reached into it and pulled out a homemade cookie.

"My aunt Rhoda sent me a few dozen of these," he said. "She always overdoes it on my birthday."

Peggy sat upright and ran her hand over her face. "Your birthday. Stan. I forgot. Can you forgive me? I'll make it up to you, I've just been so busy."

He chuckled as he sat back down on her sofa, picking up a portfolio marked ART DEPARTMENT. "It's tomorrow, baby. So you still have time." He bit into the cookie, leaving a small trail of crumbs on his beard. Peggy sampled hers. It was absolute perfection: just soft enough to be chewy. Wonderful trails of cinnamon tickled her tongue.

Stan looked over the folder of proof proposals, quietly finishing his cookie.

Peggy watched him from her desk. By now, Stan's face was tolerably familiar to her – his mocking eyes, his once-boyish face now masked by a pile of beard. Her mind began to wander to a long-ago weekend – five years ago, now! – in the Waldorf. She was mortified to find herself staring, as Stan glanced up at her, their eyes meeting squarely.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer," he said, returning to the folder.

"These cookies are wonderful," she said quickly. "Your aunt's a great baker."

"Yeah…" Stan trailed off. "She misses Robbie." He looked down at his knees and fiddled with the dial on his watch. "We all do."

"I'm sorry," Peggy said, abandoning her typewriter and sitting next to Stan on the sofa. "It must be so hard for your family. Was she your mother's sister?"

"No, my father's. Still is, actually," he chuckled, reaching in the bag for another cookie. He split it and handed half to Peggy. "It's a long story. Let's just say I'm closer to my aunt Rhoda than my mother."

Peggy took the cookie and smiled ruefully at her friend. She put her hand on his and gave it a light squeeze. "If I could ever bake as well as her, I would make you some, too," she ventured. "Maybe I'll just write you a poem about Campbell's soup instead."

"Thanks, Peggy."

"So, uh. What happened to Valentine's Day plans?"

"We…ah, we postponed them until Monday night," he replied honestly.

"Oh," Peggy replied. "Is it serious?"

Stan smiled sadly. No, but it had the potential of getting there. He'd been seeing Linda every couple of weeks since January. Stan described her to Peggy. She was a photographer; they'd met at a party.

"You would have met her, too, if you'd gone to that party."

Peggy remembered that night. Stan had asked her along to some shindig in the Village; she'd been at work on Butler that night and was still feeling the sting of seeing Ted in the kitchenette.

Peggy tried listening earnestly, but she felt a twinge in her stomach as Stan started smiling. His words began to fade away as she tried picturing him with this woman. She felt…what was it? A strange sense of betrayal, in a way. She felt her body tense up as he continued about his dating history with this woman. _He wouldn't have gone home with her that night if you'd been there_ , a voice in her head told her.

"Is she pretty?" Peggy asked sharply.

Stan laughed. "She's a good-looking chick, yeah. What do you care? You interested, too?"

Peggy smiled wanly and shook her head, rolling her eyes. Stan continued to watch her as she shuffled papers on her desk, a redness creeping over her face that she pretended wasn't there. Peggy cleared her throat.

"So, I..." Stan began.

"I have a lot of work to do," Peggy replied.

Stan rose slowly, cracking his back. These late nights at the art table were killing him. He was starting to get sick of shoe layouts. All of the Butler Shoes for women looked like something Paul Revere would wear. "Keep the rest of the cookies, Chief."

Peggy smiled and returned to her folder. He glanced over his shoulder at her in the doorway.

"Peggy?" he asked, using her real name for once.

"Hmm?"

"I'm having a few folks over tomorrow night for my birthday. You want to come?"

She thought about saying no; about avoiding the gnawing in her stomach that was sure to come when she'd run across this "Linda." But she stifled it and looked up from her papers.

"What time?"

"Seven."

"I'll be there."

Stan smiled as he walked down the hall. He wasn't sure why he felt so happy all of a sudden.


	2. Chapter 2

"Rizzo."

"It's me," said a tired voice on the other end of the line. Stan bristled.

"What do you want now?" he asked. "The damn shoe layout is at the printer's. I'm working on Chevalier now."

"No, it's not that. I wanted to apologize."

"That's rich. For what?"

"Snapping at you this morning. I'm sorry." Peggy wrapped the cord around her finger, feeling her throat go dry. "I don't know what's wrong with me lately. It's been a bad day. I owe Shirley a…I don't know. I owe her."

Stan sighed and picked up another pencil, the phone cradled against his shoulder. He started drafting an outline. Horses were his downfall. He never liked drawing them. He was having a hard time visualizing the hind legs. It might mean a trip to the library to study horse anatomy tomorrow. All this for ten seconds of a presentation with Lou Avery. Still, it was better than going home to nothing but a Moshe Dayan poster.

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

Stan sighed as he erased a portion of horse mane that was verging on overkill. He blew the shavings away, but some landed in his cup of coffee. Great. He took a sip, anyway, before speaking.

"…So treat her to lunch or something. I can't give you advice if I don't know what happened. I can make a wild guess, but you won't like it."

"So you know."

"Of course I know. You might be on track for a shitload of Clios, but you're the shittiest actress I've ever met. For christ's sake, I called it last New Year's."

Peggy cringed at the memory of those butterflies in her stomach that night. Goddamn Ted. She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a Baby Ruth she had stashed away for moments like this. She unwrapped the candy bar and popped a piece in her mouth. Ugh, stale.

"I forgot to warn you, the candy in that machine is old," Stan said. He always knew what she was doing, like he had a sixth sense. "You missed your chance years ago. Ship sailed."

"Are we still talking about candy bars?"

"Whaddaya you think?"

Peggy went silent and took a sip of coffee. It had gone cold. She ignored the urge to dump whiskey into it.

"Stan…do you think I'm stupid?"

He chuckled softly.

"Is that a yes or no?" Peggy continued, a catch in her voice.

"Peggy," Stan replied softly, as he reached for the bottle of india ink. "The idea that you think you're stupid is ludicrous."

"I've made a lot of mistakes here," she said. "Sometimes I wonder what the hell I'm doing."

Stan finished off the dregs of his coffee as he put the finishing flourish on the horse. He stood up to stretch; his right shoulder was giving him problems. "I never judge. I mean, jeez, I've made my own share of mistakes. Linda, for instance."

Peggy smiled, remembering Stan's birthday party. Linda had dropped some acid, tore off her clothes, and ran naked down the street into some cops. Stan had joked that normally that would have warranted a straight-up marriage proposal, but he restrained himself. As much as Stan postured about being open minded, he put his foot down with psychedelics and kept his drug experimentation to different grades of weed.

Peggy smiled. "You want to take a break?" she asked. "How's that horse?"

"Come on over to Chez Rizzo," Stan said. "Bring the rest of that Baby Ruth, we'll melt it in some coffee."

Peggy didn't ask how Stan knew she was eating a Baby Ruth. He knew. He always knew, somehow. Knew what her favorite movie was. Knew how much she hated Don's hat. Knew how much she disliked the smell of copier toner. She knew just as much – that he didn't like the sound of dripping water, that he loved lime Jello, that he loved cats. In fact, he had gotten her one after one too many late night phone calls flipping out about mice in her building.

" _I'll name it Stan," she'd joked. "…After you."_

" _In that case you might as well just name it Sucker. Isn't one Stan to yell at all day enough for you?" he sighed, handing her the kitty carrier. "Take good care of him. My aunt is real particular about her cats, even though she has way too many. He's a nice little fella. He purrs pretty loudly but he'll do the trick. I guarantee your mouse problem will be over in no time."_

 _She never could figure out a name for it, so she named it Cat. But sometimes in her moments of loneliness, she absently called it Stan, just to have someone to talk to._

She walked into the kitchenette and poured them each a fresh cup of Folger's. Stan joined her and patted her back.

"Feeling better?"

"Yeah. Let's go watch TV in Harry's office. What's on?"

"Petticoat Junction. Englebert Humperdinck. Bleak, if you ask me."

"Harry wouldn't think so."

"Harry's the reason it's bleak. But I do know of a secret stash of snacks in there. You don't get the munchies as often as I do without a solid backup plan."

They laughed and snuck inside Harry's office. Sure enough, in the top shelf of his desk, they found a huge pile of goodies.

"Guarantee you these aren't stale." Peggy squealed with glee as he held up two Almond Joys. They each picked up some candy and plopped on the sofa together, propping their feet on the table. Stan turned on Petticoat Junction and they shook their heads and laughed. Peggy began to feel sleepy and nodded off by the time the late movie started.

Stan looked over at her, her head thrown back against the wall, softly snoring.

Sleepily, she turned and laid her head on his shoulder. Stan felt that old familiar pull in his heart, the one he had been trying to ignore since the day he met her. He put his arm around her as she snorted and relaxed once again. She was so exhausted, he thought. Stan wondered how much time she had put into the Chevalier copy. She'd been so overwrought lately, and he wondered if Chaough still occupied too much of her mind. Or worse, her heart.

He decided to let himself enjoy this delicate moment, before the walls lifted once again and she returned to her regularly scheduled sourpuss face. He shuddered to think how she might react tomorrow morning when she got wind that he and Ginzo had been nominated for a Clio. Since the day they met, that was the one thing that stuck in Peggy's craw, and he knew it was her sore spot. He felt guilty that he had gotten the nomination with Ginzo, when it was a campaign so close to her heart. Stan admitted he felt pretty damn good for having his hard work recognized, but poor Peggy. He debated whether or not he should break the news to her, and decided to just let things happen. The last thing he wanted was to spoil the evening.

"Come on, Peggy," Stan said, nudging her awake. "We can split a cab. It's late."

"Huhnnnh…?"

"Getting on 1:00AM. Aren't you ready for your beauty sleep?"

"Shut up," she said, laughing. "Oh man, that coffee's going right through me. Be right back." She got up and walked down the hall to the ladies' room, returning a few minutes later, fluffing her hair. Stan absently wondered how many cans of hairspray it took to shape that helmet of hers, and how soft it would be without it.

"Okay, let's go," she said. "We have to present with Lou tomorrow morning. Meeting's scheduled for 9:30. How's the artwork?"

The walls had returned, Stan observed ruefully. He held up the sketchpad. It was full of doodles of naked women, a caricature of Ginzo riding the Chevalier horse, and lettering samples.

"Whoops, wrong page," he joked, flipping to the final draft of the horse.

"Beautiful," she said, smiling at him. "You really are amazing, Stan. I don't tell you that enough. But you have a rare talent."

"Cooper Union didn't think so," he said, closing the tablet. "But who gives a shit about them, anyway?"

"I really admire the work you do. I wish I could draw."

"Keep talking like that, baby, and I might have to kiss you again."

"Nice try. Call that cab before I fire you."

"On it, Chief."


End file.
